William Cecil Elam (1 February 1836–24 February 1900), journalist and Readjuster and Republican Party leader, was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and was the son of Alexander G. Elam, who died about 1843, and Charlotte F. H. Elam. At age twelve he was apprenticed to learn a trade. Elam began studying law in 1856, first in Fayetteville and then in Yadkin County with the distinguished jurist Richmond Mumford Pearson. Licensed to practice in 1858, Elam soon lost interest in the law and began to eke out an existence in Fayetteville while nurturing a writing career. Under the pen name "Klutz," in honor of his mother's German parents, he published several local-color stories in the Southern Literary Messenger. Elam also gained a local reputation as an orator and involved himself in politics, most notably in opposing the American Party, or Know Nothings, and in speaking in support of the Illinois Democrat Stephen A. Douglas during the 1860 presidential campaign.
Soon after the Civil War began, Elam joined a Fayetteville infantry company that became part of the 1st North Carolina Volunteers. He made his way to Richmond, where in December 1861 he enlisted as a private in the Ashland Light Artillery. In June 1863 Elam was detailed as a sergeant for an Army of Northern Virginia ordnance train. He was paroled on 20 May 1865 in Louisa County, where on 5 January 1863 he had married Drusilla Anne Poindexter. They had four daughters and three sons. Elam acquired a farm in Louisa County and lived there on and off for the rest of his life.
Journalist
After the war, W.C. Elam, as he was generally known, resumed his writing career. Spending most of his time in Richmond, he wrote editorials for the Richmond Examiner and the Southern Opinion. He also worked at different times as the local correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times, and other newspapers. During the 1870s he held a variety of positions at the Richmond Whig. On 27 April 1870, while covering the trial between competing claimants for the Richmond mayor's office, Elam was one of the many people injured when a floor at the State Capitol collapsed. He traveled to Cuba in November 1873 to report for the New York Times on a diplomatic crisis, and he also contributed poetry and fiction to such national magazines as Lippincott's.
In October 1878 Elam became editor of the Whig, which William Mahone controlled. A former Confederate general and railroad executive, Mahone had recently assumed leadership of the Readjusters, a biracial coalition that sought to reduce the principal of the state's antebellum public debt and refinance it at lower interest in order to pay for the new public school system and other needed public services. As editor of the foremost Readjuster newspaper, Elam played a critical role in shaping the movement's message. Skilled in invective, he embraced the pugnacious style of much nineteenth-century editorial writing and kept up a drumbeat of criticism of newspapers aligned with the Funders, who supported full funding of the public debt, and of the economic principles that had governed the state during the decade.
Elam's barbed prose involved him in two duels. After he hinted in one column that at the end of the Civil War Governor William "Extra Billy" Smith had stolen a portion of the Confederate treasury when he fled Richmond, Thomas Smith, the former governor's son, demanded an apology. Elam declined, and on 6 June 1880 the two fought a duel with pistols just outside Richmond. Elam, who was nearsighted, apparently made little effort to hit his target, but Smith shot Elam in the lower jawbone. The bullet lodged underneath Elam's tongue. He resumed work a few weeks later. In June 1883 Elam engaged in a nasty exchange of racist appeals with Richard F. Beirne, editor of the Richmond State. In words that could only have been understood as a challenge, Elam wrote that "not only does the State lie, but its 'editor and owner' lies, and the poor creature who may have actually written the article in question also lies,—all, jointly and severally—deliberately, knowingly, maliciously and with the inevitable cowardice that is always yoked with insolent bravado." The exchange attracted national attention, and law enforcement officials went on high alert in anticipation of the duel. A police officer disrupted one attempt in Hanover County, but the two men met near Waynesboro on 30 June. Beirne avoided serious injury, but Elam was shot in both thighs. He returned to work while recovering at his Louisa County home. Often referred to as the "last duel in Virginia," it was the last well-publicized duel of its kind in the United States.
Readjuster Party Leader
Elam was more than a mouthpiece for the Readjusters. As secretary of the party's executive committee, he helped organize and sustain the potentially fractious coalition, which consisted of reform-minded former Conservatives, residents of the mountain and valley regions who opposed the eastern establishment, and a majority of the state's Black voters. The Whig offices in Richmond served as the party's headquarters, and Elam advised Mahone on patronage and strategy while coordinating the printing and distribution of party propaganda and ballots. In January 1882 the Readjuster majority in the General Assembly elected Elam secretary of the commonwealth, in charge of the state's official records and library. While continuing to edit the Whig, he remained in the post until just before his duel with Beirne.
Republican Party Leader
After the Readjusters lost their legislative majorities in 1883, their influence declined. Mahone retained control after many of his followers merged into the Republican Party in 1884. Although Elam had previously advised against aligning too closely with the Republicans, he remained Mahone's most loyal ally and was a Republican through the first half of the 1890s. Two weeks before the 1886 congressional election, he entered the race for the House of Representatives from the sprawling district that embraced the city of Alexandria and the counties of Alexandria, Culpeper, Fairfax, Fauquier, King George, Loudoun, Louisa, Orange, Prince William, and Stafford. He lost to the former Confederate general William Henry Fitzhugh "Rooney" Lee by 9,836 to 7,274 votes. The following year Elam contributed to a modest revival of the Republicans' legislative fortunes when he won election representing Louisa County in the House of Delegates. He served on the Committees on Finance and on Offices and Officers of the Capitol. One of the most active Republican members in the House, Elam hoped that the party's efforts might lend it the momentum needed for a return to power. He introduced a number of bills, most of which exemplified his reforming values, but the Democratic majority duly rejected them. He did not run for reelection in 1889 after his single two-year term. In 1888 Elam became president of the Virginia State Republican League, which attempted to keep the party united behind Mahone's leadership. During the administration of Republican president Benjamin Harrison, he served as chief of the railroad division of the General Land Office.
Newspaper Editor
Elam continued to work as a newspaper editor, but Mahone's decision to sell the Whig in 1885 forced Elam to seek income from other sources. He wrote for the Washington National Republican for a time and in 1886 helped found the Harrisonburg State Republican, which he edited for a little more than a year. After Elam's tenure at the land office ended, he attempted to set up another Republican newspaper in Richmond, the Virginia Tribune, but the death of its publisher quickly ended the journal's run. Elam also contributed essays on a range of subjects to national periodicals.
In December 1895 Elam became editor of Norfolk's New Daily Pilot. In many respects he was an odd choice for the job. His predecessor had been a prohibitionist and evangelical editor, but Elam was occasionally a hard drinker. The paper had been in financial trouble, however, and Elam provided a proven and exciting editorial voice. He pursued a nonpartisan approach, but the Pilot quickly became a vehicle for his dissident views on Virginia politics. Elam argued vehemently against what he viewed as corrupt political rings in the area's local governments, a stance that once got him convicted of contempt by the Norfolk County Court. In the mid-1890s he supported the pro-silver wing of the Democratic Party. The Pilot proved a success under Elam's editorship and merged in March 1898 with its principal competitor, the Virginian, to form the Norfolk Virginian and Pilot. Elam became editor of the new paper, which was soon renamed the Virginian-Pilot, and featured an editorial policy similar to the one that he had pursued in the Pilot.
William Cecil Elam suffered from heart disease and after a few weeks of declining heath died at his home in Louisa County on 24 February 1900. He was buried in a family plot on the property. Editorial tributes recognized him as one of the ablest journalists of his era and one of the last links to the combative style of nineteenth-century journalism.
Sources Consulted:
James Walton Wright, "William Cecil Elam," Louisa County Historical Magazine 24 (1993): 73–83 (portrait on 73), and 25 (1994): 38–50, 79–94; correspondence in Bagby Family Papers, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, and William Mahone Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; writings include Mahone and Virginia! An Open Letter to Hon. John Paul from W. C. Elam (1889), and "The Last Duels in America," Lippincott's Monthly Magazine 57 (1896): 649–660; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers (1861–1865), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1881–1882 sess., 140–141; Virginia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1776– ), 1881–1882 sess., 115; Richmond Daily Whig, 21 June 1883 (first quotation), 30 Nov. 1885; Harrisonburg State Republican, 6 Oct. 1887, 1 Mar. 1888; Washington Post, 27 July 1889, 11 Apr. 1892; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1 July 1968 (second quotation); Lenoir Chambers and Joseph E. Shank, Salt Water & Printer's Ink: Norfolk and Its Newspapers, 1865–1965 (1967), 184–193, 210; James T. Moore, "The Death of the Duel: The Code Duello in Readjuster Virginia, 1879–1883," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83 (1975): 259–276; obituaries and editorial tributes in Norfolk Landmark, 25 Feb. 1900, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 25 Feb. 1900, 1 Mar. 1900, and Richmond Times, 25 Feb. 1900, 27 Feb. 1900.